Joel Littler

Research Topic

Mapping An Asian Revolutionary Space: Miyazaki Tōten’s Vision of Asia (1876-1922)

Supervisor: Professor Sho Konishi

Daiwa Scholar in Japanese Studies 

I spent three years teaching at two universities in Thailand. From this experience I became interested in the little-known transnational links between Japan and Thailand in the late 19th century. Thailand, like Japan, was never colonised, and there are surprisingly few studies of Japan and Southeast Asia outside the schema of imperial aggression and colonisation. My examination of various nonstate actors from Japan, Thailand and beyond is part of a move to reorient the history of Japan and Southeast Asia away from empire, and towards the crucial attempts of transnational solidarity and cooperation of the time.